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Known bugs in macOS Mojave 10.14.6: an incomplete summary

This article lists bugs which you and I have encountered in macOS Mojave 10.14.6 itself, rather than issues in specific third-party applications and other software.

The 10.14.6 update leaves many longstanding bugs in Mojave untouched. It does seem to bring improvements in File Sharing, and has changes in News, Notes and Photos (particularly in iCloud) which may fix other issues. The one bug which has been reported previously in this series which it does appear to address is confusion which could arise in Accent colours. Sadly, features such as Legacy Software and the resizing of APFS disk images remain completely broken. For the final release of Mojave, that’s deeply disappointing.

Safari – webloc files with malformed data forks

Although easy to reproduce, this bug is both serious and weird, and affects 10.14.4, 10.14.5 and 10.14.6.

In Safari, press Option-Command-B to open the Bookmarks. If you already have a folder within them, drag that to the Desktop. If you don’t have a folder, create a new folder and drag it within the existing bookmarks, then Option-drag some bookmarks into it. When you’ve got a few there, drag that folder to the Desktop.

The .webloc files within that folder now can’t be copied or moved, nor can you open their data forks in an app such as BBEdit: they simply do nothing, or cause the app to hang. In the case of the Finder, you may be able to cancel the operation if you’re quick. The solution is to quit Safari, which then releases those weblocs for use.

The information given about ‘legacy software’ in System Information remains incomplete and misleading. Fuller details are here. Use 32-bitCheck (from Downloads above) instead.

macOS seems to be building this list as and when macOS warns the user that each specific 32-bit app needs to be replaced. Those warnings now occur more frequently, but are still far from complete or comprehensive. Until their list is complete, users will find 32-bitCheck and ArchiChect far more reliable for informing them which apps and other software are 32-bit.

Disk Utility – can’t resize APFS disk images

This bug appears to have been present since the release of APFS in High Sierra, and persists in 10.14.6. Using the Resize… command in the Images menu on a disk image in APFS format invariably fails immediately, with an error message.

The only way to resize an APFS disk image is using hdiutil at the command line. Further details including an account of the workaround are given here.

(Thanks to Dimitris for reporting this, and to klanomath for the workaround.)

Sandbox – quarantine flags written to documents promiscuously

For several years, sandboxed apps have written quarantine flags to most if not all documents they open, even when they don’t save them. These put all those documents in quarantine, even when a document has never been near the Internet and only created and edited locally. This even happens when a ‘real’ quarantine flag has already been attached to a document; in overwriting that, the sandbox strips its link to the quarantine database, preventing further information on that quarantine event from being retrieved.

This adversely interacts with a protective mechanism which prevents easy opening of documents which have been set to be opened using an app other than the default for that type, using the OpenWith extended attribute. The end result makes it unnecessarily difficult to open such documents.

There is no way for the user to inspect or change the quarantine flag, and no way to permanently change the quarantine status of a document. The next time that it is opened by a sandboxed app, a fresh flag will be written putting that document back into quarantine.

When asked to provide a thumbnail or preview of some malformed documents, QuickLook hangs displaying the busy ‘spinner’ in place of the thumbnail or content of the preview.

To demonstrate this, take a copy of a text file, and replace its extension with ‘.jpg’. Select that file, and its thumbnail will be shown as the busy spinner. Press the Space bar and its preview will also be the same busy spinner. QuickLook appears unable to return an error to IconServices, or the preview window. This appears to affect mainly malformed image files, including JPEG, TIFF and PNG. It doesn’t appear to affect QuickTime movies, though, suggesting that the bug is in the qlgenerator for still image formats, which is part of macOS.

Although this doesn’t result in high CPU load, and doesn’t hang the Finder or anything else, it is a fundamental flaw which should never have appeared in release software.

Keyboard pane – App Shortcuts almost unusable

Open the Keyboard pane, select the Shortcuts tab, then the App Shortcuts item at the left. If you only have the single default shortcut, add some others. After adding two or more, they will be displayed with the ellipsis character … instead of their menu title, and attempts to edit that title are frustrated because the edit area is the size of the ellipsis, not the title. There is no apparent way in which this can be corrected by the user.

There are odd inconsistencies here too: the single default item Show Help menu has a checkbox at the left, but items added by the user don’t. However, as that first item cannot be edited or removed, that checkbox is the only way to disable it.

This tab is almost unusable as a result, making it impossible to set or maintain app shortcuts. macOS 10.14.4 altered this, in showing one additional letter each side of the ellipsis, but still doesn’t handle this properly in 10.14.5 or 10.14.6.

(Thanks to John for pointing this out to me.)

Calculator – defective printing of Paper Tape

There are two obvious bugs: when running in Dark Mode, if you try printing the Paper Tape in Calculator, it remains fixed in Dark Mode, printing a rectangle of dark grey with white text. The other is that it isn’t possible to change the size of the Paper Tape; it remains stubbornly fixed even if you change the paper size to A3 in landscape mode.

The only workaround for the first bug is to switch to Light Mode before printing; there is no workaround to the second, other than copying and pasting the Paper Tape output to another app for printing.

It’s perhaps worth noting here (and in the bug below) that Apple has started rejecting third-party apps from the App Store when they don’t print correctly in Dark Mode. Maybe it should put macOS in order before behaving like this to developers?

Activity Monitor – almost blank pages when printing in Dark Mode

Printing from Activity Monitor when in Dark Mode results in almost completely blank pages, which contain just a few icons.

The only workaround is to switch to Light Mode to print.

Preview – selection highlighting dysfunctional

Correct app behaviour when the user changes the selection Highlight colour in the General pane, either directly or by changing Accent colour, is to change existing selections when the app window is brought to the front or otherwise updated. Preview doesn’t do this: select some text in a PDF document, for example, then change the Highlight colour in the General pane. The selected text will remain in its existing colour highlight.

In addition, the Graphite highlight colour doesn’t work at all in Dark Mode, and may not work reliably in Light Mode either.

Apps which are built on AppKit do behave correctly, though: to see how this should work, try it with, for example, my DelightEd.

(Thanks to Dimitris for explaining this to me so patiently.)

App Store – search returns weird hits

When you enter some search terms into the App Store app, completely unrelated apps appear in the results. In some cases, these are additional to genuine hits, in others they just appear weird and unrelated. For example, searching on the word consommé (a type of soup) consistently returns an app which has nothing whatsoever to do with the word, nor does it appear in the info provided about the app.

clover returns three genuine hits, and three spurious apps which are completely unrelated. This looks like the store’s metadata are corrupted with random terms.

If anything, this has grown worse in macOS 10.14.4 and 10.14.5, with even more spurious hits, and persists in 10.14.6.

TextEdit – colours displayed differently with Dark Background

Colours used to display text are changed when Dark Background is enabled. If you save or copy Rich Text in that display mode, the colours saved or copied are very likely to differ from those shown. To avoid this, don’t use Dark Background when you’re using colour.

If you use an editor such as my DelightEd which is designed to produce RTF which ‘works’ in Dark as well as Light Mode, then QuickLook thumbnails and previews switch contained text to white in Dark Mode, but retain a white background. This renders the thumbnail/preview useless in Dark Mode.

A similar problem with Dark Mode exists when you use Control-Command-D to show the definition of a selected word: the popover window is semi-transparent, which makes text in custom dictionaries visible only when viewed over a window with a white background. If the underlying window is dark grey, then that text is almost invisible.

These are described in more detail here. There don’t appear to be any workarounds for these, other than switching back to Light Mode.

Thanks to Artyom for drawing my attention to the second of these.

Safari – errors opening local Home page, and others

If you set Safari 12.1.2 to open a local file as its Home page, this may cause an error when Safari first opens, and that error may in turn result in another error reporting that the error page can’t be found. Others also report Safari’s inability to search until a remote page has been loaded, and other potentially related issues. These are detailed here (see the comments there in particular).

Once Safari has started up and connected to a remote page, these problems usually vanish, so can be safely ignored. They also appear to occur most commonly when the Develop menu is enabled; turning that off may make them disappear, but you then lose the additional features of that menu. This bug was present in 12.0 and persists in 12.1, 12.1.1 and 12.1.2.

(Thanks to Manoli for pointing this out.)

Finder – incorrect column width

This can occur when using Finder windows which are set to column view. When switching folder in the view, the rightmost column being displayed has excessive width, filling the Finder window, its divider being placed incorrectly at the right edge of that window.

This long-standing but intermittent bug dates back to Mavericks if not earlier, and I have whinged about it here and here. It was also present in every version of El Capitan, Sierra and High Sierra. The only workaround is to select a different folder, then to select the correct folder again.

Bugs believed to have been fixed from 10.14.5

General pane Accent colour confusion appears to have been fixed at last: switching between accents seems more robust and consistent.

I’m afraid that Mojave is not supported on HFS+, only on APFS. I know that some users have got it to install on HFS+, but that is luck, not design.
You should find that an original High Sierra or Mojave installer app will offer to convert the file system for you, if that’s any help.
Howard.

Thank you.
In Mojave, APFS is so much better for SSDs that it’s worth changing. It’s still not such an advantage with rotating hard disks, though. And if you need an external drive to be usable with Sierra, or even High Sierra, it is a problem, I’m afraid.
Howard.

I just updated to 10.14.6 and now I have no Bleutooth functionality at all – the Preference pane has even disappeared, and the Men bar icon is greyed out and has a line through it. I’ve restarted a number of times to no effect.

Actually it ended up being one of those ‘it figured itself out’ things – after a few restarts, it had not fixed itself, but then I shutdown and restarted and that seemed to cure it. Strange how that works.

SilentKnight question- I need to do something similar to what you did in displaying 3 “views” in a window. Would you possibly be willing to point a Swift nudie towards any sample code that does anything like that. I am about to re-start rewriting our mainly Carbon app TopXNotes and this already gives me some ideas.

I’ll be delighted to help. Are you writing this in Xcode? I use Interface Builder to design windows and views, but you can implement them all in code rather than using IB’s nibs.
Perhaps the best way to proceed is for you to drop me an email – my address is in the About page here – and explain what you want to do.
Howard.

I found after upgrade to 10.14.6 that while connecting to my Samsung TV through HDMI Cable, the colour display on my Desktop changed to some vague Pinks and Greens. I tried everything to get original colours back. Even Reset of NVRM did not help. I had to get back to my earlier version 10.14.5 and things worked fine till I again downloaded the upgrade. Then the problem started again. Apple Helpdesk tried to help but couldn’t do much and then said that they will get back to me. Can anyone help please.

Can anyone help, please?
Although Apple didn’t see fit to mention it, there were widespread updates to graphics drivers which could account for this. But I suspect that even Apple Support wasn’t aware of that, as Apple doesn’t release that info.
Howard.

I apologize but I intended to mention this in an earlier post. This is a very thorough post and I want to thank you for it. I don’t know why Apple doesn’t post something like this with each release. Apple has sadly gone more and more vague in reporting what it in any update. Thank you for stepping up and doing something Apple should have been doing all along. We all appreciate it!

Hello Howard!
Take a look at the following.
Go to >About This Mac>Storage>Manage…>Documents>File Browser.
Normally you can see all the sizes of all folders.
Select a folder from a Finder’s window and add a color tag.
Now you can see only the color and not the size of the folder.
If you remove the color tag you are able to see the size again.
I’m not sure if anyone else has ever mention this before.
Tell me if it was clear or you need further informations to locate it.
Dimitris.

Thanks.
I’m not surprised, as the Storage feature has suffered a host of bugs. I still don’t think that it reports sizes as accurately as, say, Disk Utility, and sometimes gets things quite badly wrong. But that does look like a simple bug.
Howard.

Thanks.
Another one unacceptable bug, for the final release of Mojave.
I never use it to be honest. I saw it as I was searching for something else.
By the way, it seems to work properly on Catalina for the time being, even if it is still in beta.
Many Mojave’s bugs have jump over to Catalina. There’s no progress at all. It’s too sad. But it’s not the proper moment to discuss about them. Let’s wait for the first release.
Thanks again,
Dimitris

Hi Howard,
First, let me reiterate how very helpful your website EclecticLight.co is–many thanks!
Second, I’ll report that the issue of the MacPro6,1 remains where the macOS 10.4.6 update did not update the Boot Rom if a non-Apple SSD is the internal startup drive. Once again, I had to replace the OWC 1TB SSD in my main MacPro6,1 with the original Apple 256GB SSD to update the Boot Rom from 130.0.0.0.0 to 132.0.0.0.0. My second MacPro6,1 with an original Apple SSD still installed updated the Boot Rom the first time.
DaFoxE1

Thank you.
As a matter of interest, when you have replaced your OWC SSD, what version of EFI firmware does your MacPro6,1 report? The reason that I ask is that the EFI firmware of course resides on disk, and given that you’re swapping out the Apple SSD, that could revert the firmware. It’s a bit of a puzzle!
Howard.

LockRattler EFI Firmware (traditional): MP61.88Z.F000.B00.1906132222 (Boot ROM Version: 132.0.0.0.0) after doing the SSD swap and swap back. I didn’t write it down post the first update that didn’t update the Boot Rom but before the swap. Catalina is coming up so I’ll remember to do it then (hopefully!).

Which model of MacBook Pro is this? Is it one of those which needs the EFI firmware update in the 10.14.6 Supplemental Update, perhaps?
If that doesn’t resolve it, it might be worth downloading and installing the 10.14.6 Combo updater.
Howard.

>There is no apparent way in which this can be corrected by the user.
I can tell you what helped me (you):
From here: https://eclecticlight.co/2017/11/09/customising-it-all-global-defaults-in-macos-sierra-and-high-sierra/
$ touch DefaultsGlobal.txt
$ defaults read NSGlobalDomain > DefaultsGlobal.txt
$ open DefaultsGlobal.txt
Then scroll to section “NSUserKeyEquivalents”.
Now repeat what I did:
I found 6 or 7 backslashes in one line, right between the = and the ;. Strange! I then looked what it said to the left of the = in that line, opened the keyboard shortcut System Preferences and removed that entry normally using the GUI. (In my case it’s been option + command + tabulator key).

Dang it! That’s a bummer.
I guess then we’ll simply have to wait for a real bugfix to arrive. All I can report is that for now my settings look normal again, even after several reboots and working with it.

I think that it’s not big news, that macOS is bad at working with multiple external displays; When re-connecting the displays, or simply waking up the machine from sleep mode it sometimes “swaps” the external monitors. This is very annoying, especially for those of us who work with many open windows at a time.

The issue is quite old, and Apple doesn’t seem to care. It’s possible that the issue occurs only with certain display models / manufacturers, but it’s unheard of on Windows, and is not an excuse for Apple.

Thanks.
As I don’t have multiple displays, I can’t do any checking here, although I am aware of the long-standing issues which seem to come and go a bit with different versions of macOS and different models.
It’s odd, because I remember when support for multiple displays was first introduced, and it was such a great advance. Given the control that Apple has over graphics cards, there really doesn’t seem to be any excuse.
Howard.

I was wondering if you might have some idea of how one should troubleshoot an issue that crops up on 10.14.6 w/Supp Update – previously, on 10.14.5, I did not have a problem with rebooting when needed. Now, often multiple Apple apps including iTunes and even Terminal become stuck in an Application Not Responding state; particularly with iTunes, force quit works but restarting does not (goes back into a nonresponsive state). Then, when trying to reboot, the system is unresponsive, and a hard reboot using the power button is necessary. This happened quite rarely under 10.14.5, but I am finding this occurring on a near daily basis now. Thank you for a wondefully informative site and your useful apps; LockRattler is a favorite. Thank you.

I’d be tempted to download and install the 10.14.6 Combo updater, then apply any required security updates again as needed, and see if that fixed the issues.
Which Mac is this, and do you have any unusual settings or software installed?
Howard.

Once I updated I started dropping my internet connection constantly. I had to reboot to get back online and it would be gone again shortly. My iPhones, iPad, and PC laptop no issues staying online. Finally restored from backup from a month ago and all is well. I also turned off automatic updates.

I very much doubt that this is a bug in 10.14.6, but more likely to be a faulty update or a misconfiguration. In the first instance, I suggest that you check your Network settings are correct. If they are and you don’t have any software which might be conflicting (such as a software firewall, or 3rd party kernel extension), then I’d download and install the 10.14.6 Combo updater, then bring that up to date with remaining security updates.
Howard.

My Mac is pretty much vanilla…only thing I have installed is MS Office and Flash. At least those are the only things I deliberately installed myself. Restoring from a backup from last month has fixed the problem. I suspect something must have failed during the update. I think I will wait a while before I update…this thing is running great now. Thanks for your reply and advice.

Column view, the very large column bug: I use to press Option when clicking the little handle at bottom of the columns separator. This will resize ALL columns, including the large one, thanks to the Option key pressed.

I have a 2017 MacBook Air. Recently downloaded update to Mojave (macOS 10.14.6)…problems ever since trying to load pages in Safari. It will work fine for 5-6 sites and then just stop loading. I restart computer and same thing…. can I delete the last update somehow. I’m “technically challenged” and would appreciate any help.

The Combo updater contains all the cumulative updates required to convert Mojave 10.14 straight to 10.14.6. It’s available to download from here. That refreshes almost everything in macOS, but is normally quicker and simpler than reinstalling the whole of macOS.
Howard.

If you’ve installed that Combo update and it hasn’t helped, it suggests it might be a permissions problem on your Home folder. This is one of the issues for which Apple suggests that fixing permissions may be a solution. This article may prove a help.
Howard.

Thank you for your help…tried all the steps to no avail. However it does seem I found the solution. So Thankful!! Read an article about Safari not loading that directed me to check the proxy list in System. It seems that it was a “socks proxy” that was checked when update made (I think). I “unchecked” it and it started loading properly. So thankful. Not sure what proxies do or are for but it solved the problem when I “unchecked” it. Thanks again for trying to help

Many will not understand the “Unchecked” comment because the location is not clear. The navigation “path” is:
System Preferences>Network>Advanced
Then click the Proxies tab.
I showed 2 similar options:
Auto Proxy Discovery (checked)
Automatic Proxy Configuration (unchecked)

I went ahead with unchecking Auto Proxy Discovery.

But I am really unclear on what each does and what (if anything) should be checked. HTH at least locate the item.

Unless you are accessing through a proxy server, all the checkboxes in the list should be empty (unchecked). Then no proxy is used.
Only if you know you’re using a proxy server should you tick any of these – and whoever operates that server should inform you how to set this up.
The vast majority of users don’t use a proxy server.
Howard.

Not generally, no. I do report bugs which I don’t think Apple is aware of, such as that which stops Time Machine backups in Sierra, and when invited to. But most of these bugs are long-standing, obvious, and I frankly don’t have the time to do Apple’s testing for it.
Howard.

Cannot edit email adress in new message by using the Token menu. You have to select it twice to start the actual editing.

Dragging an email address from one email message (to: or cc: section) to another email window (oh yes, Apple, we do use, gasp, more than ONE window at once!!!) will delete that adress in the originating window, instead of copying it. That has NEVER happened before in Mac OS since back in System 1.

Cannot drag text into the Subject: field.

But hey, at least we still have the shitty animation when a message gets sent. No way to disable that waste of time either.

OK – the first and most technically detailed article is here, and the second provides some more applied detail.
So you can modify any extended attribute to preserve it, but you’ll need an app such as my free xattred to do so.
Howard.

I don’t see anything about text boxes in Safari, so I’m guessing this one is not on your radar. I’m running Safari 12.1.2 under macOS 10.14.6 on a 15″ 2014 MacBook Pro. I know I’m behind the curve, but I just updated from Yosemite. This is a clean install, but I have already added in my other third-party applications, so I can’t yet rule out some sort of conflict.

The problem I’m experiencing is that Safari occasionally (every few days) refuses to enter any keyboard text into a text box on a webpage. In my experience, I have always been able to type in the address field and restarting Safari resolves the problem. The problem affects a wide variety of sites and never affects any application other than Safari, including other browsers. I am using an external keyboard and have not yet taken the time to test the built-in keyboard. Diagnostics on this problem would be very difficult because it is so rare.

At least one person reported a similar problem (at a much higher frequency than I’m experiencing) on Apple’s board last year (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8271700), but they reported using High Sierra and that the problem could affect the address field and had different solutions.